The Near-Death Experiences (NDE) is teaching us a whole new way of looking at death, ourselves, and at least in part, what it is all about. They are telling us that we are far more beautiful and amazing than we had ever imagine. NDE1A fantastic book on the subject, THE WONDER OF YOU, What the Near Death Experience Tells You About Yourself, shows the reader step by step how this is true using the material gained from intensive research coupled with science. For example it looks at the element of time in our everyday life is an essential element to manage our lives comfortably. Yet, our NDE friends tell us time does not exist beyond this physical existence. Albert Einstein also came up with this concept almost one hundred years ago.

Many people who come back from the experience tell us that what we experience in the physical world is not real.

It is almost as though we are living in a dream and when we die we enter into a place that is much more real than this actuality. We can go to a movie and become quite wrapped up in the story. It is as though we were living the plot. Then when the light turn on and we look around we see that it was just a story. Richard Bach talks about this in his book, Illusions.

h5Today, more and more quantum physicists are beginning to agree with that this reality is an illusion. They looked at a number of elements including the operation of the brain, cosmology, and particle physics and are understanding the universe is actually a hologram. If they are right what does that mean for us? At present concepts are floating around as to where we fit in, but the predominant thinking is that it is consciousness that is operating the universe and that includes our own consciousness.

I believe that the world is becoming a much better place than it has ever been in the past. There is a wonderful new awareness in spirituality and respect of the beauty of each individual. Yes, I know there are horrid things happening around the world, I don’t have my eyes closed. But, when you consider the whole world and take a peek at the past, we see that only a few hundred years ago these atrocities were common everywhere. Dr. Steven Pinker has written a fascinating book on just this point. If you like reading text books and lots of statistics, you can get his book called: The Better Angels of our Nature. If you would still like to know more about Dr. Pinker’s perspective but not into this type of book, I suggest you go to TED Talks and watch his talk there. It is really very fascinating and is only twenty minutes long.  

As a child I was privileged to be raised in a family with no religion. My mother was an atheist and my father was an agnostic. My three siblings didn’t care one way or the other about spiritual things at all. However, my family was flexible enough to allow my interest to flourish. Over the years of growing up I attended most of the organized Christian churches close to where we lived. In my teens I became curious about other thoughts and studied different faiths. Many years later I had a spiritually transformative experience and that helped me to point my nose in the right direction to learn about the Oneness of all.  In addition I was fascinated with cosmology which gradually grew and encompassed quantum theory and the marvelous discoveries found there. 

_Lynn Russell